Immigration growth may play an even larger part than usual in filling gaps in the labor force, as the Federal Reserve looks to rebalance ꦛthe jobs market.

Businesses have a lot of empty roles to fill. As of June, there were 3.6 million more job openings than there were unemployed workers to fill them, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Immigration has helped fill that gap recently and could narrow it further in the coming months. Some 500,000 immigrants are projected to join the workforce in the nౠext three quarters, according to an analysis by Jan Hatzius, chief e༺conomist at Goldman Sachs, published Monday.

Immigrants make up a growing proportion of the U.S. workforce. The proportion of U.S. workers that were born in another country hit an all-time high of 18.7% in May. That number has been on an overall upward trend since 2010. 

Goldman economists said President Joe Biden has helped this trend, namely by reducing a backlog of visa applications during his administration and boosting the number of humanitarian refugees allowed by 30,000 a month earlier this year.

Officials at the Federal Reserve are counting on immigration to help reduce inflation. At a 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结💟果体彩网:speech last week at a conference in Jaౠckson Hole, Fed chair Jerome Powell noted that the growing labor force, fueled largely by immigration, has helped “rebalance” a labor market that has been tilted in favor of workers recently. Fed officials 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:are concerned the imbalance in the market requires employers to raise wages which, in turn, drives up the cost of living, especially in service-sector industries where labor costs are a large contributor to prices.

To the extent that “rebalancing the labor market” means “reducing wage growth,” this trend may not be welcomed by native-born workers. The belief that 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:more immigration will reduce wages has often fueled anti-immigration sentiment, although studies of whether, and how much, immigration actually pushes down wages, have shown mixed results.

Goldman economists noted that immigration creates more jobs, even as immigrants fill existing ones.

Indeed, views of immigration have dimmed in recent years. As of June, 39% of U.S. adults said immigration was a positive, while 38% said it was a negative, with the rest saying it had no effect or that they had no opinion, according to a Gallup poll. That’s down from the pre-pandemic era: between 2017 and 2019, the positive views outweighed negative ones by 14 percentage points.